


honestly

by juniordreamer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, F/M, Light Angst, Oneshot, Past Relationship(s), Weddings, background finnrose - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 07:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20484953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniordreamer/pseuds/juniordreamer
Summary: Rey tries to reconcile her memory of the brooding, seventeen year old Ben Solo she knew with the man that now stands in front of her.  And suddenly it’s like she sees all the things she didn’t before.  All the ways he’s changed.  How he’s grown out his hair to cover his ears.  How he’s taller, wider.  How his hands are rough and calloused where they were once so clean and smooth.Small changes, but changes all the same.  The markings of a man she doesn’t know.She wonders what he sees when he looks at her.  Who is she now, to him?Or: Rey returns home for Rose and Finn's wedding after being away for more than a decade.  Shenanigans ensue.





	honestly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArdeaJestin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaJestin/gifts).

> At last! My contribution for House Plaidam's Plaid Paramour (yes, this is a day late because of who I am as a person). 
> 
> This fic is for [ArdeaJestin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardeajestin), who provided a truly awesome (and VERY plaidam) prompt: 
> 
> "When Rey left her small hometown after high school seeking an exciting life in the city, she vowed never to return. But when Rose, her best friend from high school, marries Finn and invites her to her summer country wedding, Rey can't turn her down. There she runs into Ben."

It starts with a question. Innocuous, really. Impartial. Polite.

“Can you believe Rose and Finn are finally married?”

It catches her off guard a little. The question and the fact that it’s Ben Solo asking the question and for a moment she isn’t sure what to say.

But then she flashes her megawatt smile, the one she reserves for strangers, the one that puts people at ease.

“I’m—so happy for them,” she says, perfectly smooth even if it isn’t perfectly true.

And it almost works.

Except Ben Solo isn’t a stranger. Not really, anyway. Not the way most people still left in this town are strangers to her now. 

So he doesn’t nod his head or smile slightly in agreement before moving onto the next polite conversation the way she thought he might. The way any other person would. Instead he just looks at her and stares. Like he knows the secret thoughts that live inside her. The ones she’s never allowed to reach the surface of her skin.

Rey reddens under the stare, fidgets in her seat like a child caught in a lie and it’s—unsettling. That he can still affect her this way, so many years since the last time she was caught under his gaze. And when she forces her head back around toward the dance floor, it’s like fighting the pull of gravity.

She keeps her eyes trained on Rose and Finn, swirling sweetly in the center of it all. So different from the wild mess of hair and limbs that forms whenever they dance as a trio. There’s a practiced familiarity in the way he grips her waist, the way she rests her cheek against his chest.

It’s—grown up. A dance meant for two.

And she’s happy for them. She _is_. Even if it’s tinged with something a little darker, something she’ll never name out loud. Because these are her friends—her _best_ _friends_—and they deserve this more than anyone. More than anything.

So she focuses on that. And on them. The twirling and the swaying and the way the top of Rose’s head just barely grazes the bottom of Finn’s chin despite her three inch heals and this works, for a moment, to fight the sickness crawling up in her gut. The dark thing without a name.

But then Ben leans over, into her space this time, to ask another question.

Tone still polite.

Words a little less neutral.

“Do you want to get some air?”

And she nods, knowing she’s in trouble. 

\- - -

It’s only mid-May, but the night smells like summer. Like rain and dirt and honeysuckle. It’s warm too, the nocturnal creatures all buzzing in celebration of the coming solstice. Moisture clings to Rey’s skin the second they step out into the night, but it’s cool and light. Enough to chill her reddened skin and flushed cheeks. 

They follow the candlelit path away from the barn and up toward the lake, the noise from the reception growing soft and faint the further from it they go. Rey’s dress drags along the cobblestones until she sweeps down to gather the length in her hands, revealing bare feet and painted toes—pink to match the bouquets.

She catches Ben looking at them a second before he turns his head, a smirk playing on his lips. She wonders idly if she should say something, find a way to fill up all the empty spaces in the atmosphere between them. But the cicadas are _loud_ even if the rest of the world is quiet and she thinks maybe it’s okay to walk alone with only the sound of their steps to guide them along the path. 

And so they walk. Until the stones turn to soft silt under their feet and solid ground gives way to calm waters, the surface of the lake reflecting the stars from the sky above.

It’s beautiful. Quiet. 

They would come here sometimes, Rey remembers. The four of them. At night usually, when they could strip to their underwear and dive into the cool water without attracting an audience. 

She wonders if the moisture in the air calls up those same memories for him. Of damp skin and wild hair and laughing so hard it makes your eyes water and your belly cramp.

She didn’t think _she _remembered. Not like this. Not in bright, vivid technicolor. But looking out at the water, she suddenly does. She remembers everything about being seventeen. The wonderful things—loud music and night air, the slide of fingers across naked skin. And other things too. Empty bellies and aching muscles and the echo of boots on worn carpet. Unkar’s boots. Always dirt stained and mud streaked, the laces caked and cracking.

And maybe Ben sees it on her face—the ghost of a girl he once knew or an old familiar fear—because suddenly he’s bending down to pluck a handful of stones from the sand, weighing them in his palm before he reaches out for her with his other hand.

His skin is warm as he works to unfurl her fingers from a fist she doesn’t remember making. Until they lay flat and open enough for him to shift a few of the stones from his hand to hers. 

She stares down at them, then up at him, one eyebrow raised in question.

He only grins in answer, full lips pulling up at the corners before he turns and shucks the first stone out across the water. It skips once, twice, three times before sinking down into the inky abyss.

It draws up another memory. The summer before tenth grade, before any of them were old enough to have jobs or anything productive to fill those long, lazy summer days. 

She feels the pieces connect in her brain—the stones in her hand, the glint in his eye, and a spike of competitive energy licks up her spine.

“Three skips?” she scoffs, grateful to feel the other memories fade to the back of her mind. “Amateur hour, Solo.”

And then she throws her own stone, grinning madly as it skips and skips and _skips _across the water before sinking down to meet his own at the bottom of the lake.

“Five,” he declares, the grin on his face turning devilish. “That’s five truths.”

“Wh-what?” Rey huffs. “You never said we were playing that way.”

“We always played that way,” he shoots back evenly. “In fact, I think it was you and Rose who came up with that particular rule in the first place.”

“Only to make it more _interesting_,” she argues. “You and Finn would skip rocks for _hours. _It was so boring.”

“And now it’s not. Do you want to start or should I?”

“I—“ Rey starts, then sighs, wracking her brain for something to say. What truth do you share with your old high school boyfriend? Someone you know, but haven’t seen in a decade? 

It has to be true, but light, she reasons. Polite, like his questions. And neutral, like his tone was in the beginning. 

Her mind flits to a thousand truths, a thousand moments that have transpired since she left this town behind. Moments he doesn’t know. Because he wasn’t there. 

And then suddenly words are slipping from her tongue, words she doesn’t remember consenting to before they’re already being spoken, heard.

“I gave myself this haircut,” she blurts, “after a particularly bad tinder date.”

It’s quiet while he processes what she’s said, eyes passing over her hair and the way it now curls just around the ears. Then he laughs. Not outright, because it seems that isn’t something even an adult version of Ben Solo is capable of. But it’s there—a crinkle of the eyes, a silent shake of the shoulders.

Rey grins back despite herself.

“Was there alcohol involved?”

She can’t help but smirk at this, thinking back to that night just a few weeks ago and the gleeful way she’d drawn the scissors across her messy braids, a sweating glass of whiskey resting on the bathroom counter.

“Possibly,” she answers before she can stop herself. “But there’s no follow up questions, remember? And it’s your turn.”

“Okay,” he agrees, still smiling a little as he shifts what’s left of the pebbles from one palm to another.

“You know the flower arrangements on the tables?” Rey nods. “I made them.”

“The flower arrangements,” she repeats, eyebrows raised high on her head. “For the _wedding_?”

“Apparently I’m a man of many talents.”

Rey can only shake her head in disbelief as she tries to reconcile her memory of the brooding, seventeen year old Ben Solo she knew with the man that now stands in front of her.

Suddenly it’s like she sees all the things she didn’t before. All the ways he’s changed. How he’s grown out his hair to cover his ears. How he’s taller, wider. How his hands are rough and calloused where they were once so clean and smooth. 

Small changes, but changes all the same. The markings of a man she doesn’t know.

She wonders what he sees when he looks at her. Who is she now, to him?

“Your turn,” he says, pulling her from her thoughts.

She toys with the strap of her dress, yanks it back up her shoulder where it’s determined to slide down her arm as she thinks about what to tell him next.

“You know that movie that came out a few months ago?” she asks hesitantly. “The one with the cars and the explosions and the guy with the really bad British accent?”

Ben quirks an eyebrow. Nods once.

“I may have gone to see it. Twice. In the theater. By myself.” 

This confession earns laughter that’s paired with actual sound. Just a little release of breath, hardly anything at all, but it makes her smile anyway. 

“You always did have terrible taste in movies.”

“One of my many charming personality traits.”

He sits down on the sand then, long legs sprawled and somehow elegant despite the way he turns them in at the knees. 

Rey takes the place beside him before she can think better of it, leaning into his warmth as if by muscle memory.

“Your turn,” she tells him, knocking her shoulder softly into his.

He hesitates, runs a hand through his hair, and Rey can sense that the time for neutrality is over. Can see the collision coming a mile before it arrives.

She could excuse herself, return back to the reception for a cold glass of champagne and a sizable slice of cake. Don a fake mustache and pose for silly pictures in the photobooth. 

She could sit and watch her friends celebrate the start of their life together.

In the end, all she does is brace for impact. 

It comes in the form of six words.

“They didn’t think you would come.”

Rey can almost hear the crunch of metal, imagine it slicing up her skin as she’s thrown headfirst into pavement.

It steals the breath from her lungs, shines a light on the dark thing inside. The one without a name.

And Ben watches this happen, his eyes flitting across her face, her body. Looking for damage. Looking _sorry_.

It’s more than a minute before she trusts her voice to speak and when she does, she goes for denial.

“I planned half of this wedding,” she says. Calmly. Reasonably. “The colors, the food, this _venue. _We FaceTimed twice a week for _months _to work out all of the details.” She forces herself to take a breath, a steady intake and release of air before her next words. “How could they think I wouldn’t come?” 

It’s a clear violation of the follow up question rule, but he answers her anyway and she can’t decide if it’s better or worse than no answer at all.

“They know you hate this place, this town.”

A breeze drifts up from the lake and Rey shifts a little closer to Ben’s side, goosebumps rising on her skin.

She considers this, feels the weight of the words connect with her bones, and decides this time to go for honesty.

“I love them more than I hate it,” she says. Slowly, carefully, quietly. 

He nods, the movement knocking his shoulder against hers.

“They know that,” he assures her. And then— “Is it as bad as you thought it would be? Being back?”

“Yes,” she answers. “No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. There are so many bad things wrapped up in this town. Things I try so hard to forget. But then there are other things too. Really great things. All the memories with Rose and Finn. And—you. And I can’t make sense of anything or where it all fits or how I feel.” She forces another breath into her lungs. “It’s just easier when I’m gone. When Rose and Finn come to me and I can forget this place exists.”

Ben doesn’t say anything to that and she can’t help but be grateful.

“Do you three talk about me a lot then?” she asks after a moment, craning her neck so she can better see his face. 

He sits in profile, a pleasant mix of hard and soft. Long nose and plush lips. Lips he grazes with his teeth before answering.

“Not a lot,” he shrugs. “Sometimes, though. They keep me in the loop.”

A strange mix of emotions surges through her veins at this. A part of her is glad he hasn’t forgotten her. Another part is guilty that she’s glad. That she should take any pleasure from it at all because she and Rose and Finn, they _never _talk about Ben. Not in years. Not since she left.

And it was for her survival, she knows. The only way to mend her broken heart and move on without looking back. But looking at him now, she allows herself to feel sorry for it. To regret every second of the ten years he’s lived without her in it, even tangentially. 

There’s a weight to that too. All the things she’s missed. All the things she maybe could have had. If things had gone differently. If _she _was different.

“I’m jealous of them,” she says after a while. And she isn’t sure if it’s her turn or if it’s even part of the game at all, but it’s another truth. A terrible one that makes her want to dig her nails into her palms. Until it sinks back down so deep it can’t get out. “It’s just—I never thought I wanted that, you know? Like, a family or a partner or whatever you want to call it. I never thought it was something I needed.” 

She curls her toes into the sand, presses hard against the grit so that she leaves little indentations. Evidence that she was here, proof of this horrible moment and this fantastically strange night. “But watching them, seeing how happy they are—how _sure _they are about another person. I don’t know. Maybe I do. Maybe I do want that.”

Ben looks at her like she hasn’t just spoken a terrible truth. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world to understand.

“If you want it, then you’ll have it.”

And he’s staring at her again. That paralyzing, soul deep stare that she can’t look away from. Even if she wanted to.

“How do you know?” she whispers, breaking the rules again, but needing to hear his answer.

He shrugs. “I just know.”

“But—”

“I just know,” he says again. Firm. Resolute. 

He’s so sure, so smoothly confident that she nearly believes him. And wouldn’t that be nice? To have someone all her own? Someone to dance and swirl with?

And suddenly it feels dangerous, the way Ben is looking at her. The heat of his shoulder, the way her bare calf grazes against the leg of his trousers.

And she remembers so many other things. Desperate lips and nervous hands, moving fast and then so slow she could cry. Sometimes she would, when he took his time getting her where she so badly needed to be. 

And before she can stop herself, before she even really registers what she’s doing, Rey reaches up to cup his cheek in her hand. To trace his lips with her fingers. 

Sharing her last and final truth. Something without words. Without a name.

He answers with a press of his lips against her open palm, feather light and scorching. Everything she wants and not nearly enough. All at once. All captured within the same moment, the same brush of lips on skin. 

And he must see it on her face—the same way he always did—because the next thing she knows, he’s pulling her in, as close as he can get her, one arm wrapped tight around her waist. 

Up close like this, she sees the way his eyes are bright and dark and swirling. How they flit over her features, landing on her lips.

“Is this a bad idea?” she whispers, even as her nose brushes against his. 

He silences her with a kiss, hot and crushing and over far before she’s had her fill.

“No follow up questions, remember?” he says with a smirk, lips reddened and chest rising and falling a little quicker than before.

“Right,” she nods, feeling the weight again. Of this town and their past, this moment and what it could mean. All the different ways it could end. And she kisses him again. Long and slow until they’re both gasping for air.

“How could I forget?”

\- - -

Eventually they find themselves back in the barn. In the warm glow of fairy lights draped across exposed wooden beams. It’s a stark contrast from the darkness of the lake and it sets Rey off balance, like she’s suddenly traveled between worlds.

The champagne helps to steady her though. That and Ben’s hand on the curve of her back, solid and warm.

They just manage to sneak a slice of cake from the display at the center of the room when Rose spots them, a knowing grin spread across her lips.

She doesn’t ask for details outright, just grabs their hands and pulls them out on the floor where they dance—the four of them. In a wild mess of limbs and hair, like they used to all those years ago. And when the song changes, they only slow long enough to break into pairs. Rey and Finn, Ben and Rose. And then, somewhere between the laughing and the spinning, they switch so that it’s Ben’s hand suddenly gripped around her waist. Ben’s eyes meeting her own. 

Rey stares up at them, finds that they’re dark.

So dark and bright and _swirling._

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://juniordreamer.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/juniordreamer2). Come say hello!


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